


A Chance Meeting

by Remki



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3092729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remki/pseuds/Remki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short post-Abyss Alistair fix-it fic that I've had in mind since the end of that particular mission. In which Alistair finds himself still alive and trapped in the Fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chance Meeting

At first there was a blackness as thick as tar. Alistair felt himself moving through it slowly, inexorably upwards away from the comfort of unconsciousness. It was a disorienting process, a consciousness of being unconscious. And then he was awake, suddenly and with no transitional state, like cold water thrown on a sleeper. He felt his body shiver violently, waves of nausea and terror and confusion breaking over him, drenching him in an instant sweat. There was a bright, burning pain in his left shoulder. He placed a shaky hand against it and pulled it back; it came away soaked in dark, crusting blood. Sickness came over him then, stronger than before, and with it a hard, inescapable knowledge: he was alive.

Alive, and stuck in the Fade.

With a groan, Alistair sat up. He was lying on the stony ground where he’d taken his stand against the Nightmare, buying time for Hawke and the Inquisitor to escape. His memory of the fight was hazy, and came back to him in pieces. The monstrous spider-demon had brought its strength to bear against him, but Alistair had been lucky. He’d managed to get under it while its attention was still divided between him and the others as they escaped, and he had driven his sword into the great beast’s swollen belly, ripping it open like a rotten seam. Of course, that hadn’t been enough to kill it. The Nightmare had continued on fighting, but the injury took its toll. Hindered by the wound and its own great bulk, the Nightmare became slow on its feet, unable to keep up with the smaller, lither Alistair dancing between its legs and sticking it at every opportunity. But for all that, the Nightmare was still strong, certainly strong enough to kill Alistair given the right chance. Alistair didn’t dare turn his back long enough to run away, because he knew that taking his eyes off it for a moment would be a moment too long. So it became a battle of attrition, to see who could outlast the other before retreating—or dying.

Alistair won, eventually, but not without cost. The creature became increasingly sluggish with every stab. Alistair doubted he could truly kill it –it seemed unlikely that the whole of it wasn’t even really there—but he had hoped to at least crippled it. Finally, after the man managed to slice off the end of one of its legs, the spider-demon collapsed. It wasn’t dead –Alistair could feel its eyes watching his every move—but it was immobile. 

Or pretending to be. In the old days, before the Warden had helped him learn patience and strategy, Alistair might have charged in to finish the job, sure of his imminent victory. This time around, he knew better. Keeping his eye on the demon, he backed himself away and out through the narrow corridor that they had first entered the clearing through. Live to fight another day, Warden, he had thought to himself.

Unfortunately, in his caution, he didn’t notice the servant spider behind him until it was almost too late. Only its breathless hiss alerted him in time. He swung his sword around and caught the limb of the spider as it stabbed at him, deflecting it up and away from his heart. But the spider had been quick, and Alistair too slow to completely deflect the blow. The end of the leg, sharp as a dagger, stabbed through his collarbone and shoulder. With a scream of pain and anger, Alistair shoved the creature away from him, ripping its leg from his shoulder and bringing his sword to bear upon it, thrusting it deep into the demon’s skull. Unlike its master, this one died for good. 

He’d stumbled away after that, pain and blood loss and the natural disorienting quality of the Fade ensuring that he was thoroughly lost before he even knew it. At some point he’d simply been unable to keep his eyes open. In his last moments of consciousness, he’d had enough sense to try and tuck himself into an unobtrusive corner, as far away from any wandering spirits as he could, and hopefully beyond their notice. And then he’d passed out.

Now awake again, Alistair looked around him. He thought he’d passed out in a small off-shoot of one of the dry canyons that cracked their way through the Fade like a labyrinth, but now he found himself in a circle clearing—or as much of it that he could see, at any rate. His shoulder made turning his neck to the left almost too painful to bear. So when a voice spoke to his left, Alistair found himself nearly passing out again from the pain as his head whipped around to see who it was.

“Oh, you’re awake? I thought you’d sleep forever.”

For a moment Alistair’s vision was too blurred by pain to see who it was. But he blinked a few times, and positioned himself better on the ground, and when he could see clearly he recognized the speaker.

“Flemeth?” he asked, his voice tinged with surprise and caution.

“Who else?” Flemeth said. “I see time has not diminished your intellect. Though I certainly never expected to find you here.”

“I…It’s a long story. But what are _you_ doing here?” Alistair asked, pulling himself to his feet as he did. Facing Flemeth lying down was not on his list of things he ever desired to do. Even standing, the woman stood a good foot taller than him, the horns that spiraled behind her giving the illusion of even more height. She looked younger, and more together than when he’d last seen her in the Kocari wilds, but there was no mistaking that voice, or that arrogance.

“What I do and where I go are not your business, Warden,” she said. “Though you could say that I am… waiting for someone.” Her golden eyes bore into him, unblinking, dissecting him from the inside out—or at least that’s how it felt. “The better question , I think, is where are _you_ going?”

Alistair looked around, careful of his neck this time. They stood alone in a circular clearing in one of the canyons. It was bare of anything except one of those creepy mirrors without glass that he’d seen on their earlier trek through the Fade. 

“Nowhere, I supposed,” he said with resignation. “I had figured I would die here, but it seems I managed to bungle that. Now I’m stuck; there’s no way to leave without the Inquisitor.”

“Isn’t there now? I wonder,” Flemeth said. She turned away from him then, as graceful as a cat despite her apparent age, and walked slowly to the mirror. 

“What do you mean?” Alsitair asked sharply. 

Flemeth ignored him. Instead, she traced a thin hand down the mirror’s burnished surface, and to the man’s surprise the metal rippled like water and began to glow.

“I have an offer for you, Warden Alistair,” Flemeth said. The way she said his name made it sound heavy, a burden she was holding out to him. She turned back to face him, her mouth set in a grim line. “Will you take it?”

“Yes,” Alistair answered. His quickness seemed to amuse her, and she barked out a harsh laugh.

“So eager, but are you sure? You don’t know what I might ask.”

His eyes were far away when he answered her, seeing another place, another person. 

“It doesn’t matter. I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“Good,” Flemeth whispered. “Then I’ll be brief. Once you’ve returned to the human world, I want you to deliver a message for me.”

“Alright,” Alistair answered. “To whom?”

“My daughter…and your son.”

Alistair felt his stomach drop an inch, but he ignored it. Morrigan was always a touchy, conflicted subject for him, and while he bore her no ill will, he would prefer to never see her again if at all possible. As for his son… he still didn’t know what to think about that. He sighed.

“Fine. What’s the message?”

“Tell them…”

Flemeth paused. Had it been anyone else, Alistair might have thought that she was uncertain. But Flemeth? Unsure of herself? Impossible.

“Tell them… I was proud of them.”

Alistair stared at the woman, puzzled and slightly shocked. She stared back at him down her nose, her gold eyes daring him to voice any of the questions that sprung into his mind. It took a great concentration of will, but against his usual nature he managed to bite them back.

“I will. As soon as I am able,” he said. 

“Then your passage is secured,” Flemeth said. She stepped to the side and gestured at the glowing mirror. Alistair stared at it for a moment.

“I just… walk through?” 

“Unless you wish to remain in the Fade forever,” the witch answered dryly.

Alistair squared his shoulders, or at least as much as he was able to do so with the gaping wound in his left side, and moved toward the mirror. Just as he was about the breach its surface, he paused, and turned to Flemeth.

“You’re going to die, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. He could see it in her eyes, the same look he’d seen in the eyes of aging Wardens leaving for their final trek into the Deep Roads, the same look he knew he’d worn when he’d stayed behind to fight the Nightmare. Flemeth raised an eyebrow, and the corner of her mouth twitched up just slightly.

“Well well, you’re not as stupid as you look,” she said.

“Only sometimes,” he answered, his own half smile answering hers. He wanted to wish her luck, or offer her some kind words, but he knew without question that Flemeth wouldn’t welcome them. Instead, he said simply,

“Thank you, and goodbye.”

And left.

The trip through the mirror was disorienting in a completely new kind of way. It was sudden, immediate, just a shift inside as everything became something completely different and his brain struggled to keep up with the change. He went from the weird half-light of the Fade to full sunlight in an instant, and had to blink for several minutes while both his mind and his eyes adjusted. When he could finally make heads or tails of the landscape around him, he laughed. The floor beneath his feet was tiled stone. Around him stood great, crumbling columns, and above him the sky arched a cloud spotted blue where the roof should have been. He could smell damp earth and standing water, and in an instant he knew exactly where he was: one of the deteriorating temples in the Kocari wilds. The place where it all began.

He took a deep breath, and then coughed because of the pain it caused in his shoulder, and then laughed again, and kept laughing, out of joy and wonder at the way of the world and shock and pain and the sudden buzzing excitement that crept into his stomach as he realized that he would finally be able to keep his promise, that he would finally be able to return to her like he’d meant to all along. He laughed at this until his knees gave out from under him and he sank down on to the stone, still laughing through sudden tears.   
When he was able, he picked himself up again. It would be a while before he could keep that promise. First he would need to rest somewhere and allow his shoulder to heal properly, at least enough to travel safely. Then he would have to find Morrigan, and finish what he’d been set to do. But once it was over –once he was finally free of the responsibilities that had kept him away for so long—he would turn north again, towards the Warden— _his_ Warden-- and home.

“Just a little longer, my dear,” he said into the empty air. 

“I’ll be there soon.”


End file.
